Would-Be Wisconsin Governors Bid for Recall Primary Win

Amid applause last week for winning
a third term as Milwaukee’s mayor, Democrat Tom Barrett fixed
his gaze on the next job -- bouncing out Wisconsin (STOWI1) Governor
Scott Walker in a June 5 recall.

While Democrats speak as one in opposing Walker, gathering
almost 1 million signatures to force a vote, four candidates
will compete May 8 for the right to challenge the Republican
governor. Only one has won statewide office.

Residents will choose among Kathleen Falk, 60, a former
Dane County executive; Secretary of State Doug La Follette, 71;
state Senator Kathleen Vinehout, 53; and Barrett, 58. Then,
Wisconsin Democrats, who in 2010 lost the governorship, control
of the Legislature and the U.S. Senate seat held by Russ Feingold, have four weeks to convert recall signatures to votes.

“The people in this state do not want to be in a state of
permanent political civil war,” said Barrett, who was
celebrating his April 3 win at an Irish pub where Christmas
decorations still hung behind the bar.

“As long as he’s governor, there will be unrest,” said
Barrett, who lost to Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial race.

Turmoil has defined Wisconsin for 14 months. After Walker
used Republican legislative majorities to restrict collective
bargaining for most public employees, protests led to nine
recall elections last year. Those laid the foundation for the
June votes on ousting Walker, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, 36, and four more state senators, all Republicans.

Rallying Around

More than a year of recall battles has drawn national
Republican allies to Walker’s side and mobilized labor unions
around the country to support his opponents. More than $40
million was spent on last year’s recalls, and some estimates say
the next round will cost at least $60 million to $80 million,
mostly coming from out-of-state sources.

Democrats yearned for a candidate around whom the party
could unite, said Charles Franklin, a political scientist who
runs the Marquette University Law School Poll. And that was
Feingold, elected three times to the Senate and now pictured on
T-shirts inscribed, “This is What a Governor Looks Like.”

“The bottom line is, this is not a united party,”
Franklin said. “It did not get Russ Feingold and there is a
potentially disconcerting division that Democrats would rather
not be facing.”

Madison Redoubt

Falk said her party is united.

“I see excited people everywhere I go,” she said in an
interview outside her campaign office in Madison, the capital
and Dane County seat. “People are dead serious about getting
this job done.”

A lawyer backed by the state’s major unions and
environmental groups, Falk ran for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination in 2002, and lost the 2006 race for attorney general
to Republican J.B. Van Hollen by 8,859 votes out of 2.1 million.

“We are an even-keeled state,” Falk said. “We normally
get along.” Walker, she said, “has family members not talking
to family members. It’s not how we are in Wisconsin.”

Like many states, Wisconsin is ideologically divided. Dane
County, along with Milwaukee County, represents the largest
single blocs of Democratic voters. The political views that
dominate Madison, a government and university town, are
considered anathema in more rural and suburban areas. Barrett’s
base is in blue-collar Milwaukee, the state’s largest city.

New Momentum

Walker defeated Barrett in 2010 by 124,638 votes, or 52
percent to 46 percent. Barrett said conditions have changed
dramatically since then.

“In 2010, both Russ Feingold and I walked into the Tea
Party buzz saw, and now, 15 months later, I think there are a
lot of people who have buyer’s remorse,” Barrett said.

A Marquette poll released March 27 showed that in a
hypothetical matchup, Walker led Barrett 47 percent to 45
percent. He led Falk by 49 percent to 45 percent.

Vinehout, of Alma, trailed Walker 41 percent to 49 percent,
while La Follette was behind 42 percent to 49 percent. The March
22-25 telephone survey of 707 registered voters had a margin of
error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

“We’re not worried about a lack of enthusiasm June 5,”
said Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic
Party. “I know that many people wished that Russ Feingold had
run, but there are many things that people wish for that don’t
happen. I don’t believe we squander this opportunity.”

Losing Jobs

In defending his position, Walker’s central message is that
his fiscal overhaul is working, helping the state recover from
the longest recession since the Depression. He promised that the
state would get 250,000 new nongovernment jobs by the end of his
first term.

Although the state’s unemployment rate has declined since
Walker, 44, took office, to 6.9 percent in February from 7.6
percent a year earlier, Wisconsin lost 15,500 nonfarm jobs last
year from 2010, including both public and nongovernment
positions, according to the U.S. Labor Statistics Bureau.

The state ranked sixth-lowest in the Bloomberg Economic
Evaluation of States index from the 2011 first quarter, when
Walker took office, through the fourth quarter, the most recent
data available.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported Feb. 9 that the
state has a budget deficit of $143.2 million.

Mordecai Lee, a government affairs professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said the remaining four weeks
in the primary campaign are “totally uncharted political
territory.”

He predicted, though, that the party will unite, “no
matter how bad the primary gets. They’re more interested in
recalling Scott Walker. They’d vote for a yellow dog.”